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Of course it's all very subjective. For me, "over the top" means that the narrator is infusing every line with his or her own understanding of character, emotional content, level of humor or irony, foreshadowing, whatever. For most listeners this is probably a good thing. For me, it leaves too little room for my own interpretation.
For instance, I was recently listening to a book with a very good narrator. He was lively, did great voices with just enough distinction, kept things moving along, had a great sense of comic timing. And yet, as often happens, I was tired of his voice about half way though. So I picked up the text instead. It turns out that my own reading of what was going on, what those character might sounds like, their emotional state at any given time, the overall tone of the book, was very different from his.
This is no surprise. No two people read exactly the same book. But it gave me pause and made me wonder how much I wanted to experience books through the lens of a third party.
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