Yes, clients will often "wow" over the tool and not realize 99% of everything is approach.

Really depends on the piece - but what I've found from seeing the work that has come to my company in these cases is normally the difference between the original and what we did was edge. Usually when people want that Hollywood Trailer thing - they want high impact stuff.

I know we've taken in stuff which sounds a lot like what you described and I think it can sometimes be more that the person who is primarily using AE has a history of design training vs. an editor who is usually a story teller first. Promos are more about design.

One the similar projects we had I remember some of the techniques which were:

color correct the hell out of everything - put a vignette on things, fake gradient filters on poor exterior video stuff - basically use a lot of photographic techniques to make things prettier
Break appart the still frame so the foreground and background can move seperately - or just blur the background
combine the photo and the video in a split screen with a graphic element (just a line or running line) down the center
move elements in non-linear paths... so very fast - stop to see with just a crawl - but then zooming off again.

The list goes on.

Probably, if you don't like this stuff, you've not watched it a lot. I think if you watched just a ton of it - like hundreds of them, you'd start to see formulas people use to create the effect.

That's my best tangible thoughts right now. I appreciate your honest recount of that story.