Janleva 555 (2012) – Movie Review

If you cannot immediately see the essence of the film through its title, then reading this review essentially becomes a must.  The film ‘Janleva 555’’s objective was to make people more responsive to the raising death toll due to snake bites.  Unfortunately it miserably failed to accomplish that.

The film starts with an endorsement from an assortment of famous movie personalities like Prabhu Deva, Sonu Sood, and Vyjayanthimla Bali, to watch the film which was created for a good cause.  Sales generated from the film ‘Janleva 555’ will benefit snake bite patients through the immediate provision of ventilators.  The invitation seems odd, because the people they are inviting to watch the movie are already there ready to watch the movie.
Anyway, going back to our original objective of reviewing the film, it starts with a scene where two friends Poojja (played by Shona Cabra) and Neelam (played by Kalpana Pandit) have their own love interests in the movie.  These four young people have the same aspiration of becoming filmmakers someday and all have a common concern regarding the growing number of deaths in India due to snake bites.  They thought of making a film to document this concern and together with some of their friends set forth to small town in India and make it as their location setting for the film because the place was a known snake lair.  But surprise, surprise, Neelam had a sudden enlightenment about who she was in a previous life.  You guessed it right, she was Rajni the snake.  As fate might have it, in the latter part of the movie, she becomes an ichchadhaari naagin.  The entire film is made up of similar ridiculous scenes till the end, without even a pause for some comic relief.
With very little budget for promotion and bleak screening schedules, the outcome does not look promising for ‘Janleva 555’.  But this is not an excuse to present to the public such an idiotic film with a very bad story line that completely disregards common sense.  The film is so bad that you will not any more care that this movie was created for a good cause.
The topic at hand was serious and would have been given better treatment if it was done as a documentary.  The storyline sucks, the production value is nil, and the actors… forget about it.  What filmmaker Sandeep Malani was almost unforgivable.  Sandeep Malani turned an important issue into a lousy and pathetic fictional act thus losing the opportunity to impart a serious problem and get possible solutions.
The film ‘Janleva 555’ has no saving grace at all and should be relegated to the trash bin.  If you really want to help the cause it is supposedly trying to support, then perhaps you can just buy the ticket then throw it away.  No use wasting your precious time.