Part of the reason StarOffice (and by association, OpenOffice.org) is “just as complicated and feature overridden as the real thing“, of course, is that whenever Sun tries to take out feature X, customer Y complains and stops buying it. Being disruptive is so much easier when you’re starting from scratch with nothing to lose 
Well, it is possible to be innovative in this area, witness
Apple’s Pages and their word processing application (can’t remember the name now).
But honestly, StarOffice probably does not have the manpower
needed to be innovative…
Then why not start a Firefox-like system, mixing OO.org’s components in a lighter app?
The opposite of “complicated” is not “featureless”; it’s “simple”. IME as a user interface designer, when you make something simpler, people are *delighted*.
Besides, Firefox showed that a core+extensions architecture can work quite well. Why isn’t OOo modular like this, too? Customer Y can download extension X => everybody is happy.