How much better does the paint look in person. It looks WAY to vibrant and not subtle at all like Hot Toys usually does. I looks like Hasbro painted the face to me
While the paint is not as vibrant in person as my lame flash-photo, it is definitely heavily painted relative to the original movie design. That said the paint job is HT quality, not Hasbro (although your Simpsons' reference to the makeup gun left me laughing).
They are supposed to be vibrant, fun figures, so no one is going to think the paint looks 'off' unless they intimately know they source material. Usually I prefer subtle too, but like The Drizzle and Creecher both said this particular paint job simply looks good on these particular characters.
These are cheap as HT figures go and you can always have them repainted.