Ever since Ralphie May first appeared on Last Comic Standing, it seems his career has exploded and he has become one of the most recognizable comedians of the past decade. He’s just released his fourth Comedy Central DVD and has done numerous appearances on television talk shows. The guy simply is a rock star in the comedy world and shows no signs of slowing down as he is doing a US tour throughout the rest of the year. He’s always come off as a likeable guy, his humor is always topical with a bite, but in his recent DVD Too Big to Ignore with a running time of 108 minutes he may have bit off more than he can chew.
Ralphie starts out strong with the set bringing attention to the similarity Chazz Bono has with looking like Ralphie after having the sex change. And he keeps things moving as he recalls stories filled with embarrassing incidents while being a good parent and husband. The first 30 minutes of this is all solid and works so well till suddenly the jokes start to revolve about racism and gay rights. Now there is nothing wrong with the direction he took, and I respect that he’s using his platform to discuss these issues, but it just goes on for too long. Sure his stories were amusing, but at times it just came off as being preachy, and that’s not what one expects when putting in a standup DVD.
To be fair, I think this DVD makes for good social commentary especially with the current events floating around in the news, but other than that I have to say I’m a little disappointed here. The running time is just too bloated where easily a good 20-30 minutes could have been cut from this. A tighter act could have helped make this routine seem less like a lecture with humorous anecdotes and more like a solid performance that I’ve come to expect from Ralphie with a good lesson learned. After watching this though I came away feeling “Meh”.
