Rohan Khanna (Akshaye Khanna) is a jobless graduate living with his grandfather (Alok Nath) and his mother (Moushumi Chatterjee). Rohan has been tirelessly looking for a decent job without success. One day, Rohan's neighbour, Ranjit arrives from America, where he co-owns and runs a motel and is married to a white woman of European descent. Ranjit suggests that Rohan should also move to America and find a white European woman to marry and settle with.

Rohan is immediately persuaded and prepares his visa/paperwork with Ranjit as his sponsor. At this point, his mother reminds him of his late father, Balraj (Rajesh Khanna), who had similar dreams of settling in USA and left her and Rohan alone in India with nobody to look after them.

Rohan settles in his new life in USA and enjoys it immensely for many months, but he notices Ranjit is increasingly abusive towards his own parents and places them in a nursing home and the old aging parents always face verbal abuse from him and his European white wife. Also, Rohan notices that Ranjit becomes increasingly indifferent towards him and his needs, asking him to move out of his house and apartment with little notice.

Later, Rohan luckily meets Sardar Khan (Kader Khan), a Pakistani man who earns his living as a taxi-cab driver, who is immensely impressed by Rohan's good manners and friendly personality. Sardar offers Rohan a place to stay,sharing the room with Iqbal Singh (Jaspal Bhatti), a Punjabi man from India and also offers him a temporary job as a taxi-cab driver. Rohan moves in and makes new friends easily.

One fine day, Rohan in his job as a taxi driver, meets a young Indian woman named Pooja (Aishwarya Rai) at the airport and they become friends. Later on, Pooja confides in Rohan her sad story of how her brother disappointed her by calling her to visit him in USA and hooks her up to marry his European boss who is a womaniser, without her consent.

Taking pity on her sad plight, Rohan offers to share his room with her, with the permission of Sardar Khan and the Punjabi tenant who also shared the apartment. All of them welcome the couple, Pooja and Rohan, who are now deeply in love.

Sardar Khan helps the couple to find odd jobs in fast food joints, laundromats, restaurants and gas stations, etc. where they can earn some money, and Rohan is always protective of Pooja and seldom allows her to travel alone or too far.

After a few years of doing these odd jobs, Rohan is tired of it all and wants to do something bigger to earn more money and he is advised by his friend Sardar Khan to approach Mr. Chaurasia (an influential Indian in the jurisdiction). Chaurasia advises Rohan to get a Green Card by marrying (on agreement) an NRI girl and once he gets the Green Card he can file for divorce. Chaurasia agrees to be their referee and sponsor.

Rohan and Pooja start looking for women who are ready to do this legal paperwork - and after a long search they meet seductive Loveleen (Suman Ranganathan) and after Rohan marries (files legal paperwork for civil marriage) her, he forgets Pooja completely, much to her dismay. Rohan becomes so hopelessly tempted by the beautiful Loveleem that he gets aggravated with his old friends and moves into a luxurious mansion provided by the wealthy Loveleen - and warns his friends to stay away from him. Sardar tries to warn him not to be consumed by his greed for luxury and women. Rohan tells them that they are envious of his progress.

In order to move on and to forget Rohan, Pooja finds a job as a caretaker/maid for a rich Indian man Balraj, who is ill and aging, and also bed-ridden most of the time. Pooja does not know that this is the Balraj - who had selfishly left India years ago, leaving his wife and his son Rohan alone to fend for themselves.

Pooja meets Balraj's son Karan, whose mother had deserted Balraj when Karan was a baby boy. Therefore, Karan has grown to be a spoiled and arrogant young man, who is also friends with Loveleen (now Rohan's arranged legal wife). Karan consistently asks his father for money to spend for his enjoyment. He even took a huge loan from Marko, a dangerous drug dealer and to re-pay his debts, he is assigned to transport drugs around the country.

Balraj takes a liking to Pooja and considers her as a daughter. He wants to keep her in his home so he asks her to consider marrying Karan.

Meanwhile, Rohan begins to realise that Loveleen's American culture deeply goes against his. He gets fed up with her ways and realises he is really in love with Pooja. He leaves Loveleen and goes back to Sardar and his friends and they tell him that Pooja now works as a caretaker for an old man called Balraj in Springfield meadow mansion.

Rohan sets out to ask Pooja for forgiveness where he finds her with the old sick man Balraj. Rohan tries to convince her to return to India and this is where the title song comes in.

Pooja agrees to do this, and as they part Rohan gives her a locket with a picture of his mother inside, saying that it is a token of promise that he will marry her. Pooja tells all this to Balraj (as she considers him to be a father figure by now) that she has fallen in love with a man named Rohan, and he encourages her as Rohan seemed like a nice guy.

Meanwhile, Karan, being arrogant and spoilt, wishes to marry Pooja. He is always violently man-handling her in the house and threatening her that he will continue to treat her like a servant until and unless she succumbs to his desires. After violently urging her to marry him, her locket falls on the ground and Balraj picks it up.

Balraj opens the locket and he is surprised to see his wife's picture inside it! After Pooja explains about the locket to him, he realises that Rohan is his son but does not tell Pooja immediately as he fears that Rohan might not accept him as a father in his hostility (and Karan might get more envious).

After hearing from Pooja that Rohan is struggling to make ends meet, Balraj asks Pooja to call Rohan for an interview to his company for a Manager position, for which Rohan passes and is offered a well-paying job and career at last! Rohan expresses his gratitude for the opportunity and then Balraj continues his generosity from afar by giving Rohan a $5000 bonus, and anything he wishes for.

After a few years, Rohan goes to visit Ranjit's poor abused parents and offers some help because he knows Ranjit is ignoring them all the time. Rohan pays for the parents Nursing home rent charges as well as their ticket to return to India as the parents wished to return to their homeland. After this, Pooja and Rohan continue to live a happy life in USA and plan to return to India after some time.

Just before their departure, Balraj confesses to Rohan that he is indeed his long-lost son and that he had kept this secret from him fearing a hostile unacceptance of help from his part!

Rohan is stunned to realise that Balraj is his father and reacts in anger. Balraj continues to explain that after he arrived in America, he went back to India to find his family, but he could not, so he remarried. Balraj insists to speak to his wife to ask for forgiveness. She immediately forgives him and asks them all to come back to India.

Finally, they are all united as one big happy family, including Karan, who is acquitted of his charges because he helps the Police find out and arrest Marko the drug dealer.

• Akshaye Khanna as Rohan Balraj Khanna
• Aishwarya Rai as Pooja Walia
• Rajesh Khanna as Balraj Khanna
• Moushumi Chatterjee as Rama Khanna
• Navin Nischol as Dr. Ashwin Khurana
• Suman Ranganathan as Loveleen
• Kader Khan as Sardar Khan
• Paresh Rawal as Jai Kishan Patel/Jack Patel
• Satish Kaushik as Chaurasia
• Jaspal Bhatti as Iqbal Singh
• Vivek Vaswani as Vaswani
• Himani Shivpuri as Mrs. Chaurasia
• Alok Nath as Rohan's grandfather
• Aditya Hitkari as Karan Khanna
• Jatin Sial as Ranjit
• Sulabha Arya as Ranjit's mother
• Achyut Potdar as Ranjit's father
• Vishwajeet Pradhan as Drug Dealer
• laxman patelas drink dealer

The music is composed by Nadeem-Shravan. The soundtrack was very popular upon its release. All songs were very popular among the masses.

Mohammad Ali Ikram of PlanetBollywood gave the film 7.0/10 and wrote "Aa Ab Laut Chalen may be filmi in conveying the theme, but the point is presented with laudable conviction in the second half. Rediff noted "Maybe Rishi Kapoor was bowing to RK tradition, maybe he was trying to follow his heart, but he just has to get back to the drawing board and seriously plan that next venture".^[4]

The box office performance of the film was classified as a "Flop" by Box Office India.^[5] It is R.K. Films' last movie to date.