“Table 19” is an under-imagined, overly-pleased-with-itself comedy about half a dozen “colorful characters” who meet while sharing a table at a wedding reception. The premise sounds like it has possibilities (Robert Altman, of course, set an entire movie at a wedding), but the strangers-at-a-table concept turns out to be a thin excuse to cobble together what might have been the pilot episode for a glibly forgettable TV series. This is the sort of movie in which the characters start off telling fibs and tossing off rim-shot jibes, but within 45 minutes they’ve become a makeshift “family” of eccentrics who’ve got each other’s backs. Almost everything that happens in “Table 19” rings cloyingly false. The movie wants to make you laugh and cry, but you may be too busy cringing.

In theory, it should be a redeeming feature that the movie stars Anna Kendrick, whose presence will certainly lend...