Review: Insult comic Jeff Ross doubles down on being Minnesota Nice

There are plenty of comics who have alienated audiences by being too harsh. But what happens when a renowned stand-up comes across as too soft?

That question lingered over the Twin Cities premiere of “Take a Banana For the Ride,” Jeff Ross’ one-man show about grieving with giggles.

Ross is best known for roasting celebrities and ripping into fans, picking up the baton once carried by Don Rickles and Joan Rivers.

There were throwbacks to that tradition at the Parkway Theater Wednesday, the first of four nights at the Minneapolis venue, including a short segment in which mostly inebriated volunteers stumbled to the stage for the opportunity to be offended.

A sequence in which Ross casts Queen Elizabeth as a sex fiend was a real howler.

He could also be merciless on himself.

“I look like Charles Barkley 11 days after I drowned,” he said shortly after making his entrance from the back of the room, dressed in a banana-colored suit.

But much of the 80-minute show was a series of love letters and clips from home movies, all dripping with sentimentality. It was as if Sid Vicious decided to front a Barry Manilow cover band.

He bent over backwards to excuse bad behavior from deceased family members, including a father who picked up a cocaine addiction when his kids were still teenagers and an uncle who sounded as insensitive as Gene Hackman’s character in “The Royal Tenenbaums.”

His anecdotes about the late Norm Macdonald, Bob Saget and Gilbert Gottfried were delivered with kid gloves, at least compared with the kind of sharp jabs thrown during his recent production of “The Roast of Tom Brady.”

Sing-alongs with a bouncing matzo ball had all the edge of a 1940s matinee performance in the Catskills.

It’s not that Ross didn’t warn us. In a recent interview with the Star Tribune, he said he wants this tour to make an “empowering and bold statement on how to get through tough times.“

But some fans may have still felt cheated. Spectators popped in and out of their seats for drink breaks more often than you’d expect during a relatively short show with no opening act.

Several people around me made an early exit, perhaps in hope that Ross would notice and slam them on their way out. He didn’t.

Unfortunately, they missed the evening’s highlight, a segment dedicated to the elderly German shepherd he adopted during the pandemic. The jokes managed to be both dark and darling.

That’s the sweet spot Laurie Kilmartin and Sarah Silverman hit consistently during recent tours in which they talked openly about losing parents.

There’s every reason to believe that Ross will do the same as he continues to develop the latest incarnation of this production. Perhaps he’ll even open up more about his recent battle with cancer, a topic he only brushed upon during Wednesday’s show.

Until he gets there, fans can expect a mostly sentimental, and sometimes sappy, evening. Bring a banana.