You have to take a longer perspective on this think about where information is going, think about vectors rather than bitmap, think about non-interaction rather than interaction, think about the complexity of the apps of the future and you will realize that animation might not be such a bad idea. With skeumorphic design you only have the illusion of access to the elements with a flatter design you can programmatically access them and change them which will open up for interesting new visualization opportunities.

With regards to be being heavy handed both apple and google are well aware of that which explains their support for this new way of approach GUI design.