It does what is does, part of it's bad press
is it tends to be the first database newbies use.
So on top of it's own inadequacies when it comes to big systems, you get very juvenile code, such as lots of client side processing, business logic in the UI etc.
As for going from express to access, it depends on what features you use doesn't it, I must agree if you can move it easily, you probably didn't need it.