One of the defining aspects of Star Wars is its apparent timelessness, both in its mythological themes and in its setting. It is designed to remove itself from the contemporary in order to access the universal in everyone, and this is probably why the humor is such a big point of contention for these new movies.

Comedy as a genre is notoriously difficult to sell to a wide audience because many jokes rely on the absurdity of specific things taken from contemporary culture. Poe’s jokey bit at the beginning of TLJ relies on an entire subgroup of crank call jokes, and while the joke isn’t new, it isn’t exactly ancient enough to disappear into this aforementioned universal experience. I think this is why the original trilogy rarely makes jokes, opting instead for more generalized situational humor and physical (often droid) comedy.

TL;DR Star Wars should be generally funny, but not not specifically jokey.