Net::FTP Trouble - Beg for help~

Hello, I am having a hard time trying to get a part of my script working. This script checks the availability of services. The mysql check below works great, but the FTP check does not. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

THIS WORKS:

use DBI; # MySQL Check
$dbh = DBI->connect("DBI:mysql:jdarow_monitor:localhost","db_name","mypasswd");
if ($dbh){$mysqlstatus = 1;}

### ( $mysqlstatus = 1 if mysql down )

THIS I CANNOT GET WORKING:

use Net::FTP; # FTP Check
$ftp = Net::FTP->new($ftphostname);
$ftplchk = 'ftp->login($ftpusername, $ftppassword)';
if ($ftplchk){$ftpstatus = 1;}

### ( $ftpstatus should = 1 if ftp down )


Thanks to all that respond, I really appreciate it too!

Here was another attempt:

$ftp = Net::FTP->new("1.1.1.1");
$ftplchk = $ftp->login("jdarow", "mypasswd");
if ($ftplchk){$ftpstatus = 1;}

Could you not just use the typical error handling for the connection check?

$ftp = Net::FTP->new("$server") || die "$server unreachable\n";
$ftp->login($user, $cred) || die "Login fails for $user\n";
$ftp->quit();