Critical Thinking Connection - The Venetian Twins

While reading your posts this evening, I was struck by another connection to a recent event that might help us explore the trope of mistaken identity within dramatic comedies.

On Monday, I saw the headline below:

Here's a link to the video
Now, I am sure this is not at all a laughing matter for the reporter, though Samuel L. Jackson manages to play the moment for some modicum of comic effect, but does this mix-up of identity work in the same way as the Tonino/Zanetto confusion in The Venetian Twins? Wherein does the difference lie? How would you alter this situation for it to work within a comedy frame?



Similarly, given the following plot synopsis of the Hitchcock thriller "North by Northwest," shouldn't it be a comedy? Why doesn't the plot sound like a comedy? How does the trope of "mistaken identities" need to function within a text for it to earn the label "comedy"?

A suave, succesful New York advertising executive finds himself, through a case of mistaken identity, embroiled in a web of intrigue and murder that takes him across the country to prove his innocence to the police and get an evil crime syndicate, looking for a lost microfilm, off his tail.--Google