Honestly haven't used Lion myself but this seems to be a consensus view.
Don't sing its praises until you've tried it. Knocking my opinion based on your derivation of "consensus" is pretty dishonest.
Launchpad/Mission Control are simply poor implementations of some sort of iOS-type experience that simply make no sense. Full screen mode on most apps is worse than Snow Leopard, the odd movement into a new screen as a sort-of context switch is plain odd. Restoring windows on Preview/Quicktime leads to you simply having a mess of windows appear as soon as you open the apps.
It is a half-way house between Mac OS X of old and iOS, and it shows. I don't often agree with Gizmodo, but their review seems most like my views on it. I wouldn't have spent the $30 if I didn't want to like it.