The film's brand of wit is thus established, along with its notion of compassion.
Pearl's grief over the loss of her husband (Bob Dishy) is established in a funeral sequence that has her relatives fighting over which parkway to take to the cemetery. 'Not too spicy, we're Jewish,' warns Shirley MacLaine as Pearl Berman, a recent widow who seems to be getting free advice from every last person in Queens, and who herself is criticizing someone else's cooking. In fact the grotesque far outweighs the funny, emphasized as it is by shellacked hairdos, deliberately awful costumes (the year is 1969) and crude conversation. ('Even cheap borscht is a blessing for the toothless.' 'When you got a humpback, why spend money on a nose job?') Why would anyone not under duress want to spend time with a loud, obnoxious family eager to discuss body odor, toilets and Tupperware? 'Used People' makes the dubious assumption that these are funny grotesques, and that within their earthy platitudes lies some kind of reassuring candor.
