Hmmm....I can't necessarily disagree on the evolved push in their timelines. However, it should be noted that (and I only picked this up from listening to hardcore Trekkies debate the finer minutia of the movie) Kirk was actually older when he entered Starfleet here than in the original timeline. The counter, though, was that he skipped past some of the middle, and hit Captain. But, he only makes Captain in this movie just three years before he did originally. He was always the youngest Captain in Starfleet history, so I guess that...coupled with my own enjoyment of nostalgia...allowed me to just accept it and move on to the sequel.
Overall, while I agree with some of your complaints about it, I never once felt it was "Dawson's Trek". That would insinuate there's tweeny melodrama between everyone. I found it to be a surprisingly mature movie, in terms of emotional dealings. It wasn't about relationships and jobs and mundane, pedantic crap like that. It was life and death, family, and about young adults thrown into a grow-up-or-die situation.
But, that's just what I took from it. Hopefully, the sequel will steer clear of a lot of these issues you found...
