Classicshell does a good job of using a Windows 2000 style shell, and is completely configurable. It's also freeware.
The windows 7 shell has a number of features that some of us oldies who grew up with NT4/95/2000 take a good deal of getting used to, so i don't think that the 'subjective' comment is considered fair.
There was a project many years ago to run the NT4 shell on Windows 2000 (fred vorck), and the 95 shell on Windows 98 (98lite). Both of these required severe file patching to get the things to work, and not all things worked that well.
On the other hand, there are shells that replace bits of explorer, in much the same way that Win31 shells work, that seem to do quite a good job of things.