TMP may build on the foundations of TOS, but visually and stylistically there is no connection to TOS whatsoever.
And did they not mention that?
Scotty: "Admiral, we have just finished 18 months redesigning and rebuilding the Enterprise."
Kirk: "My experience. Five years out there dealing with unknowns like this. My familiarity with the Enterprise and it's crew."
Decker: "Admiral, this is an almost totally new Enterprise. You don't know her a 10th as well as I do."
McCoy: "And they probably redesigned the whole sickbay to! I know engineers. They love to change things."
And of course, don't forget the picture of the Enterprise pre-refit hanging on the well in the recreation deck. And thanks to the new Director's Edition, the Enterprise even retains a lot of it's original TOS era sound design.
It sounds to me that if they were rebooting TMP in any way shape or form, they wouldn't have bothered to explain why the Enterprise is so different looking. They'd just as well could have said that the Enterprise has always looked like that.