User Reviews

Li Yang, China's most notorious motivational speaker, teaches English throughout China in a most peculiar way. He does it the "Crazy English" way.

The documentary bearing the same name as his teaching method follows Li Yang around China while he teaches ordinary American-English phrases to groups massed in squares, streets and parks, and even troops massed on the Great Wall.

Zhang Yuan's "Crazy English" presents a new type of Chinese nationalism, and not in a pejorative way. He and Li Yang openly encourage the export of Chinese culture, stating that by learning the language of the West, you can penetrate the Western World. Overall, the political tone is similar to Zhang's "Seventeen years", neither pro-, nor anti-Beijing. What may be perceived as slight tones of propaganda lacks political involvement. The type of nationalism presented here is uniquely cultural and linguistic, and encourages the Chinese to be proud of their culture and language. Formerly-banned Zhang produces a mixture of comedy, information and school lessons that will appeal to both Chinese and Anglo-Saxon audiences. "Be crazy every minute, everyday, everywhere!"

it has been 6 years since i heard this movie for the first time. and also i've ever been to heaps of speeches of Liyang, which are quite moving and made the audience quite exciting!

i think this movie is one of the best Chinese documentaries,but unfortunately, in the mainland, we have no chance to see that until now. who knows when can i see that? besides this one, there are also many movies from zhangyuan that cannot be seen in china. directors like jiazhangke and so on ,also got the same destiny as zhangyuan.what a pity!for the Chinese fim industry and also for the global film industry

also i'm wondering that where can i get the DVD of that movie?

Just like any typical Chinese documentary of success stories, this film did not gave the detailed description on Mr. Li Yang's failure in his early years: the reason of his successful learning technique was created was because he failed university English exams repeatedly.

The translation of the title of this film is not appropriate either: instead of crazy, the translation should be: Mad English instead, because in his technique, Mr. Li emphasized speaking English madly, everywhere and every moment. Mad refers to enthusiasm instead of insanity.