Flat-screen TVs find their way into the souped-up technology and updated social commentary of the Blue Man Group's new show at The Venetian. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

The new Blue Man Group show at The Venetian is changed more by its staging than by new content. But these are still funny guys who can't resist a joke about Las Vegas' penchant for stages so large you can land an airplane on them.

When a Blue Man uses air-traffic control sticks to guide in the nose of a jet that roars in from the wings, you have to laugh along with the creators for not further succumbing to the lure of spectacle in their sleek custom theater.

At least, a lot of us do. Some fans may be disappointed the new show doesn't do a whole lot more than transplant the first Blue outing on the Strip, "Live at Luxor," into upgraded surroundings, gorgeous as they may be, from the lobby to the light show.

And newbies who never caught the Luxor edition now face both inflated ticket prices and expectations. The Blue Men have lost their surprise element in the past five years, as they crossed over from the cool kids to the mainstream. And yet, their strange collision of playground comedy and post-grad intellect still isn't as universal as some of the local competition.

At least you can say the creators -- original Blue dudes Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton and Chris Wink, with director Michael Quinn -- now have a longterm home with the tools in place to expand their vision. Maybe they will even come up with some future twists that will surprise the Strip as much as the original show did in 2000. For now, at least, they've vaporized some of the problems with the Luxor edition like so much paint in a drum head.

The vastness of the Luxor's stage and auditorium eclipsed the early part of the show, which introduces the three silent, primal pranksters (played by a rotating cadre of Blue Men) as they catch marshmallows in their mouths and spit up colorful Jackson Pollock gook on canvases.

The new seating configuration puts more spectators closer to the stage, most of which is purposely kept back in the shadows for the first half of the show. When the big reveal comes, it's complete with beautiful high-resolution video and lighting effects by Marc Brickman, designer of two colossal Pink Floyd tours.

New material was lifted in part from a rock tour that never came to Las Vegas. The blue guys parody the whole boy band, lip-sync pop movement while giving the audience a chance to find out what Madonna's "Like A Virgin" sounds like on instruments fashioned from PVC pipe.

A new bit where the Blue Men turn up with flat-screen TVs in place of their heads also alleviates some repetition the Luxor show had in the second half.

The sound quality and video accents in the new theater are astonishing. The Cap'n Crunch-ing of cereal now sounds like Godzilla stomping Tokyo. Text crawls full of wry commentary on the too-much-information era now race around the massive stage like living creatures. And the music is still an oddly wonderful brand of spaghetti Western meets "The Outer Limits," only now delivered with clarity as well as volume.

Too bad the new show didn't subtract more while it added. A bit using video to show what supposedly happens to an audience recruit is tedious for repeat customers. A logical ending point that involves the whole audience is followed by a pointless "encore" that's dwarfed by the new staging.

You'd like to think that anyone who was inventive enough to paint himself blue and start making musical instruments out of PVC will eventually break free of this newly conservative nature.

In the meantime, perhaps the practice of letter-grading reviews -- something newspaper readers and editors tend to value more than the writers and entertainers -- can be put to good use.

If you haven't seen Blue Man Group before, you can't deny the "A"-level originality of its vision and quality of its presentation. If you've seen the show once, give the new one an "A-" for promise still to keep. If you've seen it twice, think "B+" while you fidget during the familiar parts. More than twice? You qualify for true Blue geekdom and you're right back at an "A" again.