The Beastly Trailer: Love is Only as Ugly as Something You'd Watch on The CW

Nothing can liven up a fairly dull day like a brand-new trailer. Unfortunately for everyone, the first look at Terrence Malick's forever-gestating Tree of Life is only attached to theatrical copies of Black Swan (see it, see it, see it) and not yet online. (Though that hasn't stopped some outlets from falling prey to ambitious pranksters.) So without Sean Penn and Brad Pitt to warm our cockles on a chilly Friday, we're left with Vanessa Hudgens, Alex Pettyfer and Mary-Kate Olsen, as some devil woman in an updated version of Beauty & The Beast? Oh, come on.

Beastly -- which saw its initial release date pushed to spring to avoid Hudgens from having to battle her boyfriend Zac Efron at theaters this summer (y'know, since Charlie St. Cloud was such a juggernaut) -- looks, well, beastly. It's easy to imagine this trailer being for a series on The CW and not a theatrical release. Pettyfer stars as a douche-y high school brat who gets cursed with an ugly spell (courtesy of the Olsen Twin), and must find someone who loves him for him in the span of the year, or risk remaining ugly forever. (And make no mistake, he's pretty ugly -- in that Kenneth Branagh/Robert De Niro Mary Shelley's Frankenstein sort of way.)

Enter Hudgens, who is just adorable to see past his deformities, and some inspiring coffee house "rock." Plus Neil Patrick Harris as a blind tutor, who looks like Barney from How I Met Your Mother minus the attitude. What will happen!? Well, probably a third act misunderstanding and some life lessons about beauty being the inside.

VERDICT: Wait for the series adaptation on The CW.

[via Moviefone]