Rating: ***(3 stars)

How many avatars of Kangana Ranaut’s Tanu do we get to see  before filmmakers  of every shape  and size  get tired of  romancing  the  smalltown ? From Aanand Rai to Ashwini  Iyer Tiwary, everyone  has done it. This one  with a title as quirky as  the smalltown rom-coms once used to be, tries hard  to build a case  for its heroine Binny’s sassy lunge to a fantasy-freedom. If you  enjoy  Binny’s daddy  discussing  brassieres with his daughter’s  prospective  groom’s family, then this one is for you.

Binny as  played by Pranati Rai Prakash is  a poor distant cousin of and Geet in  Jab We Met and Tanu (who  doesn’t want to wed Manu) and  also related to Yami Gautam’s  selfie-obsessed mofussil influencer Pari in Bala. Except , that Binny has neither the gumption nor the basic intelligence to recognize her own ridiculous self-obsession and her over-reaching ambition for what it is: a mindless moronic megalomania where she hops skips and jumps from boyfriend to boyfriend  while her parents look on with sighing indulgence. Beti jawaan,  parents pareshan …that sort of  thing.

Binny parents are played  by the talented couple Atul Shrivastav and Alka Badola Kaushal. They are highly  interchangeable with Pankaj Tripathy and  Seema Bharghav or  Ratna Pathak Shah and  Sanjay Mishra.All these actors have become  a part of a clichéd kingdom of smalltown behaviour,amusing to begin but extremely annoying in  its  stubborn persistence as a cinematic formula to  raise laughter at  the  cost  of the characters’ arrogant ignorance.

Binny’s father  owns a  lingerie shop and  she insists  on  calling it ‘lin-giri’ .You can laugh your  heads  off but she will refer to her Daddy as  ‘Day-dee’. I am sure Binny asks  her  thirsty friend ‘Would you  like  a  Cock?’ while pointing to the beverage on display.

The  boyfriends are  played by  low-end model  types except  the  buffoonish Raja who  is played by Anuraag  Singh  who once was Subhash Ghai discovery. Clearly he is inspired  by  Aamir Khan in Ram Gopal Varma’s Rangeela and he seems  to have fun with his role  although the  writing is clearly based on shallow perceptions of  female  empowerment in  closed societies. For instance the  bride confessing to her  almost-groom that she has had pre-marital sex  minutes before the wedding is  a highly perverse  formulistic way  of saying  , if men can do it so can women.

Gender definition be  damned, Mannphpodganj Ki  Binny is just happy pleasuring itself getting turned on by  its own version of middleclass  liberalism.