Having lofty aims is not a bad thing at all. The director of 24, Vikram Kumar, clearly did. He set out to create a Disney-style sci-fi film with elements like time-travel, a Stephen Hawking-ish villain and locations inspired by fairy tales. He also managed to incorporate most of those elements. But he then seemed to have remembered that he was making a Tamil film with a really big star in it, which meant he needed to incorporate a lot of other elements. And when you decide to incorporate all those elements, too, you have bitten off more than you can chew.