Sorry to sing a different story, but I never really liked Rajesh Khanna, though I have seen nearly all his movies. I recently saw many of his movie again, now that I have more patience and can sit through some real shitty movies. But for me, the excitement in seeing a new movie of Dev Anand, Saif Ali Khan, and others is not there when I think of a Rakesh Khanna movie. I think he was a lucky guy who was at the right place at the right time. He had some superb producers, directors, music director, lovely co-stars and, of course, Kishore.
Rajesh was only trying to ape either Dilip Kumar or Dev Anand. He did add his own mannerisms, but they were very feeble. His body language and dialogue styles was repeated in every movie. Even in Aradhana, the difference between his walking into the house as an young officer, and his style as a dejected man was hardly any different. In a way, he was like Shammi Kapoor who repeated a successful theme and mannerism again and again till people got tired. Again, like Shammi was backed by beautiful songs sung by Rafi, Rajesh has superb songs sung by Kishore. Shammi was always a rich spoilt kid with a devil-may-care attitude. Rajesh was always a person who was deeply in love with a beautiful woman and one who was wronged by society or lost his love and wallowed in a lot of self pity. Like 'mast bahaaron ka my aashiq my jo chaahe yaar karron' and 'yahoo' was made for Shammi, 'yeh kya hua, kaise hua' suited Rajesh a lot.
In Anand, he was clearly over shadowed by Amitabh, and he himself accepted that his days were over once Amitabh entered the scene. People such as Vinodh Khanna and Rishi Kapoor were far better actors than Rajesh Khanna. But then you cannot deny the grip Rajesh had over the people. Being a good actor had nothing to do with that.
Cheers
