Directed by William H. Macy. Starring Billy Crudup. Rated PG.

After an impressive launch, William H. Macy’s first shot at feature-film directing gradually drifts off course before completely losing its way in the final stretch.

The nautical metaphors come from the lakeside boat where previously successful ad man Sam Manning—played well by Billy Crudup—has retreated after beloved son Josh (Parenthood’s Miles Heizer) was killed during a mass shooting at an Oklahoma college. Nursing his daily hangover, Sam works a mindless construction job until his ex-wife (Felicity Huffman, in real life married to the director) dumps the boy’s music gear on him. Eventually, he investigates the journals and demos and sees that Josh was really onto something in the songwriting department.

On a whim, Sam grabs the lad’s acoustic guitar and performs one of these tunes at a local coffeehouse (run by Mr. Macy, in fact). There, he attracts the anxious attentions of would-be musician Quentin, with Anton Yelchin channelling Jesse Eisenberg at his most annoyingly chatty. This conveniently lonely kid pesters him into pulling out more songs for guitar-and-voice duets, and they’re soon joined by a bassist and drummer (Ben Kweller and Ryan Dean) for serviceable, if overproduced, music in the currently fashionable Nirvana-meets-Mumford & Sons mode. (Most tunes were written by Brits Simon Steadman and Charlton Pettus; most guitars were ostentatiously provided by Gibson.)

Sam’s decision to hide the source of his songbook becomes an oversize plot conflict, something explained only by a poorly handled third-act twist. Even then, it’s left woefully unexplored by neophyte writers Casey Twenter and Jeff Robison, working with the director on a sketchy screenplay that also shows zero interest in Sam’s own musical talent, or his background in general. As you’d expect, Macy gives considerable room to his actors—undeservedly in the case of Selena Gomez, as Josh’s former girlfriend, who materializes twice to yell at Sam for cultural appropriation and then disappears again, perhaps into the lake.

Laurence Fishburne has a nice turn as a kindly music-shop owner, but apart from adding diversity to the film’s white, middle-class milieu, this means little to an “indie” story that pretends to be about something serious while settling for vaguely catchy melodrama backed by sitcom beats.