It’s funny. And that’s fantastic. We have to thank Banksy for giving us all a laugh. His latest exhibition, from the burnt-out ice-cream van that doubles up as a ticket office at the entrance to the “exit through the gift shop” sign that defaces a landscape and takes up pretty much the entirety of Bristol museum. To wander through it feels like flipping through a 3-D joke book.

The humour ranges from the childishly impudent through the provocatively disrespectful to the disturbingly dark. The show includes anything from a Rembrandt self-portrait, defaced with a pair of rolling eyes, through a “Help Peaches Geldof” stencil painted on a wall in Timbuktu, to a truly sinister sculpture of a uniformed police officer rocking like a child on a merry-go-round horse. A zoo of incredibly realistic animatronic creatures, of a clucking hen hatching its McNugget chicks, of fishfingers finning around in a tanks, of a fluffy white bunny applying eye-pinking cosmetics, will certainly provide an eye-catching focal point.

But the most successful works — as one might expect of an artist who made his name with site-specific graffiti — are those that respond to their context, subverting high cultural expectations and mocking sensibilities. Here is a copy of Claude’s Flight into Egypt with an easyJet hoarding offering tickets to Cairo for £35 going up in the middle of it. Here is an anorexic Rokeby Venus examining her nose job in the mirror. Here is a Damien Hirst spot painting being quite literally erased by one of Banksy’s trademark stencil rats. (It will be worth double the price now.) A woman wearing one of those saucy bra-and-pants aprons over her burkha hangs alongside an 18th-century portrait. Is there any difference between the Muslim wife and the cosseted aristocrat? They are both presented as erotic commodities to be owned and consumed by their male partners.

But, after a bit, being with Banksy feels a bit like being with that pub bore who bombards you with jokes. The edge wears off. His works are irresistibly cheeky and he has lots of energy. But in the long run they are no more than visual one-liners.

There is no further resonance: none of the ferocity of Jean Dubuffet, the French modernist, for instance, who first brought the raw voice of the streets into a high cultural forum. He doesn’t lay bare the underbelly like Jean-Michel Basquiat, the New York graffiti artist. And you could hardly call his political commentary sophisticated. Who hasn’t imagined the Commons filled with hooting chimps?

Perhaps that’s the problem. Banksy’s work may, on the surface, seem subversive, but in fact it confirms our most common opinions, it shores up our most populist prejudices. The artist doesn’t open up ideas. He just dances about exuberantly one step ahead. Once you have caught up with him, once you’ve taken the pratfall or he has pulled off the prank, the point of the piece is over.

His work is not radical. On the contrary, it is far too safe. But that probably explains why he is so popular. The best thing his show can do is entice visitors to the gallery, introduce them to the other works in an occasionally remarkable collection. If it manages this, then we should also thank Banksy for that.

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010