From its faux female-empowerment storyline to its you-go-girl ethos, so much of Jeannette Godoy’s romantic comedy feels planted firmly in 2010s millennial culture. Given a membership by her millionaire uncle to his exclusive country club, our scrappy protagonist Ariana (Samantha Boscarino) spends the whole movie girlbossing her way to the top. She even manages to find love on the way.
Centring its comedy around the clash between Ariana’s rebellious nature and the snobbery of the private club – which manifests in the terrifying form of posh queen bee Skyler (Caitlin Carver) – Diamond in the Rough attempts to update the mean-girl trope with a painfully superficial dose of class consciousness. The positioning of Ariana as an underdog is quite ludicrous, considering how her family connections land her a personal interview with a media mogul. For a self-proclaimed Gen Z with a social justice conscience, it is bizarre that Ariana’s response to the hierarchical, old-fashioned exclusivity of the club is … to recruit hipper members. The film’s decision to frame her romance with Jason (Griffin Johnson), an employee at the club, as a badass act of defiance also rings hollow.
While cliches are a built-in feature of romcoms, the predictability of everything anyone says is so glaring that it becomes impossible to overlook the plot implausibilities. The flatness of cinematography doesn’t help: with all the charm of a nondescript commercial, you cannot help but long for the golden days where romance films tried to be visually appealing. It is a testament to Boscarino’s charisma and comic timing that she manages to deliver an entertaining performance, encumbered as she is by the surrounding lack of inspiration.
• Diamond in the Rough is released on 28 November on digital platforms.
