‘Aa Ab Laut Chalen’ (1999) (late Rishi Kapoor’s directorial debut) brought together for the first time on RK Films banner of superstar Rajesh Khanna. This movie was released after a four-year exile by Rajesh Khanna. His last release before that was the much delayed ‘Sautela Bhai’ (1996) which tanked at the box office.
Rajesh Khanna appears in the movie as a character actor, Balraaj Khanna, who shoulders the second half and climax.
The movie stars Vinod Khanna’s son, Akshaye Khanna, as the lead hero. He plays Rajesh Khanna’s son who, like his father, runs away from his motherland to make money. He makes emotional blunders, cannot mix with the culture abroad, gets a cultural shock, and then mends his ways. He then meets his estranged father. The father and son then return to their homeland.
It also stars Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Moushumi Chatterjee, Navin Nischol, Suman Ranganathan, Kader Khan, Paresh Rawal, Satish Kaushik, Vivek Vaswani and Himani Shivpuri.
‘Aa Ab Laut Chalen’ was a decent movie by Rishi Kapoor. It could have done better if the editing had been made crisper. The songs by Nadeem-Shravan were very popular. Overall, it is a family movie with good locations, a great supporting cast and a performance by Rajesh Khanna that cannot go unnoticed. The film was a critical and commercial success.
Rajesh Khanna died on July 18, 2012 at the age of 69.
