Andra King Taluka, Arun Dev, Bhagyashri Borse, comedy, drama, India, Mahesh Babu Pachigolla, movies, Murali Sharma, Raghu Babu, Rahul Ramakrishna, Rajeev Kanakala, Ram Pothineni, Rao Ramesh, reviews, Sindhu Tolani, Tulasi, Upendra, Upendra Rao
November 27, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Mahesh Babu Pachigolla
Telugu with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in India, primarily in 2000, with flashbacks to 1990, the comedy/drama film “Andhra King Taluka” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A superfan of a famous actor starts a fundraising initiative to donate money for the actor’s stalled 100th film, and the fan gets bullied and shunned by many people because the actor is considered a has-been with a string of recent flops.
Culture Audience: “Andhra King Taluka” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and superficial movies about fandom.
“Andhra King Taluka” is an epic but empty film about a superfan of a famous actor. This bloated and redundant 163-minute comedy/drama is a mess. Upendra is a headliner and the movie’s title character, but he’s in the film for less than 20 minutes. What makes Upendra’s limited screen time so insulting to viewers is that it’s a “bait and switch” manipulation for this “cash grab” movie. Upenda portrays the movie star who is the catalyst for everything that happens in the movie, and yet he’s barely seen in the movie.
Written and directed by Mahesh Babu Pachigolla, “Andhra King Taluka” takes place in India mostly in 2000, but there are some flashbacks to 1990. The movie is oddly paced and wastes opportunities to be an interesting story about how far someone can take fandom before it becomes an unhealthy obsession. Instead, “Andhra King Taluka” just becomes a very boring slog of repetitive scenes showing the movie’s “superfan” getting into fights and having a romance that doesn’t look believable. The acting performances are mediocre-to-terrible.
“Andhra King Taluka” begins by showing famous actor Surya Kumar (played by Upendra, also known as Upendra Rao) performing a monologue in a scene while he’s on the set of an action film (which is also called “Andhra King Taluka”) that is his 100th movie. Surya is mostly known for doing action movies and dramas. It’s explained a little later in the movie that Surya also has the nickname Andhra King.
After he is finished with the scene, Surya is in his dressing room trailer when he is visited by the movie’s unnamed chief producer (played by Raghu Babu), who is there to deliver some very bad news. The producer tells Surya that the movie has been canceled, and production must shut down immediately, because there is no more funding for the movie. The producer explains to a shocked Surya that the chief investors for “Andhra King Taluka” think that the movie is going to flop, so they pulled the funding. It doesn’t help that Surya’s three most recently released movies have been flops.
Surya’s ego is wounded by this news about his 100th movie being canceled. He has a flashback memory to 1990, when he won a Best Actor prize at an awards show where the winners are chosen by votes from the public. After the ceremony, where he was mobbed by adoring fans, Surya was in the back seat of a limo with his manager Nayak (played by Rajeev Kanakala), when Surya noticed that his trophy was partially broken because a tip of the trophy was missing. The trophy had briefly fallen on the ground during the chaos of getting into the car.
Nayak offers to contact the awards show staff to get the trophy replaced, but Surya declines the offer. He tells Nayak that the reasons for winning the award are more important than the trophy. Surya says he will be forever grateful to his fans, whom he credits as the biggest reason why he has had a long and successful career. Toward the end of the movie, it’s revealed what happened to the missing part of the trophy.
Now, 10 years later, Surya’s career is in a slump, and he doesn’t know if can recover from this latest setback. At home, a dejected Surya tells his unnamed wife (played by Sindhu Tolani) that his 100th movie has been canceled. She suggests that Surya should ask for help from someone in his large fan base who can provide financing to complete the movie.
Surya takes that advice and calls a wealthy investor (played by VTV Ganesh), explains the situation with the movie being canceled, and asks for a loan of ₹ 3 crores (₹ 300 million) that the movie needs to be completed. The investor says he can give the loan on one condition: Surya’s 100th movie must be a film that the investor’s son is starring in, and Surya would have a supporting actor role as the father of the son’s character.
Surya hasn’t had a supporting role in years, so he is insulted by this offer. He also thinks he should be the lead actor in his 100th movie. Surya tells the investor that he’s going to decline the offer. The investor thinks that Surya will be desperate enough to reverse that decision. Surya is too proud to sell things such as his mansion and luxury cars to raise money for the project.
The situation with Surya’s canceled film goes from bad to worse. Much of the film was crowdfunded. And when it’s reported in the news that the movie has been canceled, an embarrassed Surya denies the story and says the movie has been put on hold, not canceled. Despite this denial, an angry crowd of protestors gather in front of Surya’s mansion to demand that he give an apology to the journalist who broke the story. The protestors also demand that the movie’s crowdfunders get refunds.
In the midst of this PR crisis, Surya gets some unexpected news: His manager tells Surya that someone has mysteriously deposited ₹ 3 crores into Surya’s bank account. An investigation is conducted into who is the mystery source of this deposit.
The movie then goes into flashback mode to 1990, when an enthusiastic boy named Sagar (played by Arun Dev), who’s about 10 or 11 years old, is taken to the movies by his unnamed father (played by Rao Ramesh) to see a film starring Surya, who is Sagar’s favorite actor. Sagar’s father encourages Surya to be a cinema enthusiast and doesn’t mind that Sagar is a big fan of Surya.
At the movie theater, Sagar spontaneously writes the words “Andhra King” on a T-shirt and hangs the a T-shirt on the front of the movie theater near the poster for Surya’s latest movie. A crowd outside the theater cheers when they see this fan spectacle. This corny and unrealistic scene is supposed to show how Surya got the nickname Andhra King.
Later in the movie, it’s revealed why Sagar has such an emotional attachment to Surya. Sagar used to have a stutter. He was bullied about his stutter by schoolmates and other peers. His father physically abused Sagar in a very misguided attempt to “beat” the stutter out of Sagar.
However, after Sagar heard Surya given an inspirational speech on the radio, Sagar’s stutter magically disappeared. Sagar began to excel in school, and he gained the respect of his father and other people. Sagar is convinced that Surya is the reason why Sagar’s life improved, so Sagar becomes a devoted fan of Surya. Sagar’s unnamed mother (played by Tulasi) is concerned that Sagar’s fandom will turn into an obsession, but Sagar’s father tells her not to worry.
In the year 2000, Sagar (played by Ram Pothineni) is a college student and the president of Surya’s fan club, but has not yet met Suyra. Sagar isn’t even sure if Surya knows who Sagar is. The vice president of the fan club is Sagar’s best friend Eshwar (played by Rahul Ramakrishna), who is a stereotypical goofy sidekick.
Sagar likes to host and promote events where Surya’s movies are shown at a local movie theater called Mahalakshmi Cinemas. The movie theater’s snobbish and mean-spirited owner Purushottam (played by Murali Sharma) named the movie theater after his daughter Mahalakshmi (played by Bhagyashri Borse), who is about the same age as Sagar. Purushottam has a lot of contempt and condescension for his working-class employees. In one scene, Purushottam unleashes a shouting rant where he calls them “lowlifes” just because he thinks they are low-class and stupid.
At one of these Surya Kumar fan events, a restless crowd has been kept waiting outside because the film hasn’t arrived at the theater yet. (Remember, this is in the year 2000, when many cinemas had projection rooms that used film equipment, not digital equipment.) Some rowdy people in the crowd start throwing things at the theater, and a window gets broken in a second-floor room where Mahalakshmi and Purushottam have been watching the growing unrest.
Some of the broken class gives Mahalakshmi a minor cut on her face. Purushottam is enraged and blames Sagar, who notices Mahalakshmi and is immediately smitten with her. Mahalakshmi notices Sagar too. Cue the lovey-dovey music.
The Surya Kumar film is finally delivered to the theater, and the event takes place. However, Purushottam holds a grudge against Sagar for Mahalakshmi getting injured and for the violent vandalism. Throughout the movie, Purushottam encourages a gang of about eight or nine local bullies to harass Sagar and get into fights with Sagar.
And when a movie has a disapproving father of a pretty daughter who has a mutual attraction to the movie’s protagonist, you know what happens: The movie’s protagonist and the daughter will fall in love and have a “forbidden romance.” It’s all so predictable. And unfortunately, this romance is very dull because there’s no believable chemistry between Sagar and Mahalakshmi, who is treated in the film as nothing more than eye candy whose only purpose is to support Sagar.
“Andhra King Taluka” then goes on an increasingly irritating repeat loop of Sagar getting into various fights and conflicts when he finds out that Surya’s 100th movie needs money to be revived, and Sagar is determined to lead the mission to get the money and “save” Saurya’s career. Several people don’t believe that Sagar can achieve this goal. In between these disputes, there are some song-and-dance numbers awkwardly shoved into the story.
The movie plays a not-suspenseful-at-all guessing game of whether or not Surya will find out who’s behind the mysterious deposit, and whether or not Sangar will finally meet Surya. This flimsy story could’ve been told in half of its time length and it still wouldn’t be substantial enough to be entertaining. And the movie seems to condone situations where a fan makes a celebrity the focal point of the fan’s own identity, to the detriment of the fan’s health and the relationships in the fan’s life.
Sagar’s unrelenting fixation on Surya often causes Sagar to disregard many important people and issues his life, but this fixation is excused because it’s cloaked in supposedly charitable fundraising. Simply put: “Andhra King Taluka” glorifies this type of unhealthy fan obsession. And that is the worst and most unredeemable thing about this poorly made and shallow movie.
Prathyangira Cinemas released “Andhra King Taluka” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on November 27, 2025.