Flamboyant is defined as "(of a person or their behaviour) tending to attract attention because of their exuberance, confidence, and stylishness." May we call it a form of over-the-topness (of which cinema is no stranger to)? Such characters are usually "loud" either from their appearance or their mannerisms or just they way they conduct themselves.
In my movie watching experience (let's stick to non-comedies for the purposes of our discussion here), such characters are usually the antagonists (think Hans Gruber from Die Hard, Joker from the Dark Knight, Willem Dafoe in The Lighthouse, Calvin Candie from Django Unchained) or supporting figures. A protagonist or the main character is usually played straight with little focus on exuberance for various reasons. For instance, to lend some seriousness to the central arc of a film or to make them connect well with the average viewer. Not that flamboyant protagonists or heroes don't exist. They do, but it is a challenging act to execute and is sometimes done so for the sake of cool.
Captain Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies & Benoit Blanc from Knives out are 2 examples of characters in my mind where flamboyancy worked to great effect. It is no surprise that one is a pirate and the other a detective. 2 kinds of characters cinema has often presented in flamboyant ways.
The way Johnny Depp & Daniel Craig played those characters, they added a layer to the figures on the script. Jack Sparrow's mannerisms and persona act as a way to constantly fool the others around him to give certain impressions, whichever Jack wants to achieve his end. Similarly, for Blanc, his over the top way style of conducting investigations and interrogations have an impact on his subjects, to make them nervous and shaky or on the contrary to start trusting him so that they may confide something.
It is no wonder that these characters were quickly able to make such an impression on the audiences and they became quite popular and in the process the actors gained hundreds of millions of dollars to reprise their respective roles. But coming back to the topic at hand, it appears that the actors added a lot of life to the characters who could have been played straight. However, their was enough control and restraint so as not to become cartoonish or lose the essence of the character (something Johnny Depp started to do later on, the writers too being partly guilty).
Jack and Benoit are two of my favorite cinema characters and a big part of it is their flamboyancy.
This leads to a follow up question. Can such characters sustain a movie without supporting characters being played straight? Will & Elizabeth in POTC are straightforward, normal characters which allows room for Jack to be flamboyant. Similarly, in Knives Out, our co-protagonist Marta played by Ana de Armas is a grounded character and serves the heart of the story which doesn't work in another way.
Can a non-comedy movie work if all its protagonists are variations of over the top and flamboyant?
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/vgvugj/jack_sparrow_benoit_blanc_when_flamboyancy/
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