Alice (Maya Erskine) is getting over a breakup. Ben (Jack Quaid) is so busy looking for a perfect partner that he never gives relationships a chance to work. In “Plus One,” these longtime friends from college agree to be each other’s dates to what might otherwise be an unbearable marathon of weddings — weddings whose other attendees immediately recognize that they make a natural couple. (The audience will have figured that out from the premise.)

The movie, written and directed by Jeff Chan and Andrew Rhymer with the crowd-pleasing factor set to max, has a similar marathon quality. Will these two leads be able to outrun so many clichés? Erskine, a comic talent best known as a creator of the Hulu comedy series “Pen15,” suggests that the answer is yes: Her Alice is so effortlessly confident and funny that it’s almost a shame she is destined to end up with a bore of a comedic straight man. (Only Rosalind Chao, as Alice’s mother, comes close to upstaging her.) Quaid, as the stick in the mud whom Alice is always pushing to do things, cleans up well in a suit, having inherited his good looks from his parents, Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. Unfortunately, his mother’s gift for oddball line readings is in short supply.