Apologies in advance for being male. Asking a man to review “Off the Black” is like asking a woman to review “Beaches,” or asking Superman to taste test different flavors of Kryptonite. It’s a father/son film built around baseball and starring professional dad Nick Nolte, who’s been honing his fictional fatherhood chops in movies like “The Hulk” and “Clean. “It’s not a good movie, but it’s a very effective one. If you had to be killed, most of us would choose a subtle poison, but a sledgehammer to the head? A little crude, but yeah, that’d do the trick. “Off the Black” is that sledgehammer.

Mr. Nolte, looking and sounding like he’s been marinated in lung cancer, plays Ray Cook, a Little League baseball umpire in a small town full of rusty cars, dirty clothes, and aluminum siding. After calling a tough game he lies back in his pleather chair to embalm himself with domestic beer and wakes up after midnight to find his house being vandalized by young malcontents. One of them is caught, unmasked, and exposed as Dave Tibbel (Trevor Morgan), the pitcher he ruled against in that day’s game and a kid who, fortunately, needs a father figure. But Ray doesn’t need a son until he gets an invite to his 40th high school reunion and decides that he wants to show up with a family in tow even if it’s not really his family and even if it’s only just a son.

Dave’s dad (Timothy Hutton) is an emotionally castrated wimp, no match for Mr. Nolte, who’s as virile as a bull and capable of ripping emotions through his eyeballs in bursts of scalding tears. Young Dave and old Ray bond in that quasi-sexual macho way men do over beer, fishing, whiskey, urine, spitting, and poking fires with sticks. By the time substitute dad and surrogate son go on their big date it’s only appropriate that they wear their Sunday best and one of them brings flowers.

But let’s not forget how bad this movie is. Not that it matters: “Flashdance” is a bad movie, “Footloose” is a bad movie, “The Rose” is a bad movie, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a perfectly valid emotional experience with any of them. Still, “Off the Black” is bad. Director and screenwriter James Ponsoldt strains to squeeze out a gritty indie, but what’s landed onscreen is an off-the-shelf indie flick that might have come from Costco. There’s mournful steel guitar music, smash cuts of abstract nature, and a script where “Tab A” slides smoothly into “Slot B.”

Supposedly oblique, once the elements of the story are unveiled they snap together like an Erector Set: This isn’t real life, it’s “How To Write a Screenplay” at its most mechanical. The dialogue is “stylized,” which means it’s clumsy and you can practically feel the director patting himself on the back in every shot.

It’s the actors who, as usual, sell the material. In fact, they upsell it. Messrs. Morgan and Nolte generate so much electricity that they may as well be connected by jumper cables; even their physicalities are a study in dynamic contrasts. Mr. Nolte’s body seems to be constructed by stacking major household appliances on top of one another: a dishwasher on top of a washer/dryer with an ice bucket for a head and vocal cords encrusted in crud. Mr. Morgan looks like an elf from “Lord of the Rings,” all long hair and lanky frame. But, like most teenagers, his face is too big for his head and he’s covered in a light sheen of grease.

And let’s not forget the power of daddy. From the very first sound movie, “The Jazz Singer,” all the way to cinema’s most lucrative franchise, “Star Wars,” father/son issues have proven to be the single most enduring concern of motion pictures. Most of the people making movies are men, so it makes sense that dad movies are practically a cottage industry: “I Never Sang for My Father,” “Fatherhood,” “In the Name of the Father,” Isabella Rossellini’s “My Dad Is 100 Years Old” (now playing at Film Forum), “My Father the Hero,” even “The Passion of the Christ” was basically a father/son drama, only with more crucifixion and less baseball.

It’s a genre as ritualized and conventional as the so-called “women’s movie” and it’s one that doesn’t stand up to criticism. These movies either make you cry and wish you’d played more catch with your dad, or they don’t. “Off the Black” does. As a rumpled Nick Nolte passes out and mumbles, “Any father would be proud to have you as a son,” it’s a bullet that pierces the heart of anyone with a Y chromosome. A bad movie, sure, but “Off the Black” is a perfect testosterone tearjerker.