It's not that the ribald 2011 comedy, written by Death at A Funeral's Dean Craig and directed by Priscilla's Stephan Elliott, was a flop, but time hasn't been especially kind to its reputation. It scores a lowly 16 per cent from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and a not-much-better 36 per cent from Joe Public.

But a sequel we have got, in the shape of A Few Less Men, which picks up immediately after the events of the original. All of which prompts the question why?

"The first one sold internationally and did really well, and there's a market for comedies like that," says Ryan Corr, who plays an English gangster in A Few Less Men. "And although it carries on from the last one, this was very much a new film. There were a lot more gags in it, it wasn't trying to follow any hidden or subliminal narrative. The jokes are what they are."

And what they are is broad: there are probably more penis jokes in A Few Less Men than in pretty much any Australian film since Alvin Purple.

Surprisingly, many of them are quite funny.

The film kicks off with Englishman Luke meeting an untimely end in the Australian bush, after which his three best mates are charged with getting his body back to England by "Mad Cousin Henry" (Corr), a Tom Hardy wannabe with a penchant for pink sweaters round his neck and inflicting pain on others.

Naturally, nothing goes according to plan, and along the way the three friends encounter the sort of situations and characters that might spring from the imagination of the most feverish teenage boy on the planet: cross-dressing serial killers, sex-crazed geriatrics, dim-witted farmers and hippy trippers.

Corr happily admits it's a film of "outlandish folks", and he and the rest of the cast - fellow Australian Xavier Samuel and English actors Kris Marshall and Kevin Bishop - had a blast bringing these lurid and lewd cartoon characters to life.

"We were able to tip over into the absurd, and you don't very often get permission to do that," he says. "When you do get the opportunity, it's a lot of fun."

Elliott has been replaced in the director's chair by Mark Lamprell, who made the musical comedy Goddess in 2013, but writer-producer Dean Craig is again steering things.

It isn't for everybody, but Corr reckons he knows exactly where the audience for the film lies.

"When I was 16 or 17 years old, me and the boys weren't going to watch the latest Academy Award winners, we were going to American Pie, Death at a Funeral," he says. "I know that the boys I was at East Doncaster Secondary College with will be right-out laughing in the cinema at this one. I had a lot of fun making it, and I think it achieves exactly what it set out to do."

Xavier Samuel, Kris Marshall, Shane Jacobson, Kevin Bishop and a giant gold willy in A Few Less Men.

Corr is speaking down the line from Los Angeles, where he is similarly trying to achieve what he has set out to do. He's been numerous times since winning the Heath Ledger Scholarship in 2011, but this is the first time he's gone with an open diary, to see how far he can chase the dream.

In Australia, of course, he garnered some unwelcome attention a few years back for chasing the dragon. Is there a sense of freedom that comes with being in a city, a country, where his past - on screen and off - is not so known?

"Not necessarily, man," he says. "I've tried to remove all pressure, whether it was here or in Australia, and just be present.

"It's not so much about what you've done before. It always comes down to what you do in the room, and having the decision makers say, 'I think he's right for this character'. There's a peace in that."

Corr has been acting since his early teens, and his credits include stints on TV with Packed to the Rafters, Tangle, Lovechild and Cleverman and on the big screen in Wolf Creek 2, Where the Wild Things Are, The Water Diviner and Holding the Man.

Hollywood seems the logical next step, "but it's a hell of a workload, man. I've got 17 scripts in my inbox right now. If I can read them all in time, and actually put down three days' worth of work to get a test that's performance-grade, that's one."

He's got two more features that ought to see light before the end of the year - the bikie drama 1%, written and directed by Matt Nable, and Mary Magdalene, a biblical tale from Lion director Garth Davis.

"He's one of the true talents of our time and I think he's very quickly about to become one of the most important directors around," says Corr.

On TV, he recently co-starred as John "Strop" Cornell to Josh Lawson's Paul Hogan in Hoges, Seven's two-part biopic. He didn't know much about the man before he landed the part, "only what I'd seen in Howzat," he says. But he soon came to appreciate the significance of Hogan and Cornell's foray into the US market, both with the Tourism Australia ads and with the Crocodile Dundee films that followed.

"They were trailblazers," he says. "They knocked down many of the barriers that faced Australians going over to the States - and here I am now over in America trying to make it happen myself."

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As John Cornell in Hoges, with Josh Lawson as Paul Hogan and Justine Clarke as Noelene.

Corr says it doesn't really matter to him whether he works in Australia or the US - it's just that there's so much more work to be had over there. "LA is just the Olympics of what we do."

As it happens, though, the first couple of roles he auditioned for in the US were American-funded but set to be made in Australia.

"I moved from Melbourne to here, and the first job I went for was shooting in Melbourne, and then the next one was in Tasmania," he laughs. "The irony is not lost on me."

A Few Less Men is out now

Karl Quinn is on facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on twitter @karlkwin