Judge rejects bid to halt Borat DVD

A US judge has rejected a bid by two university students to halt the DVD release of the hit spoof Borat.

West Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joseph Biderman also refused to order the removal of a scene that included the two men, who claim they had been duped by Sasha Baron Cohen into misbehaving on camera.

The University of South Carolina students had filed a lawsuit claiming they were tricked into making racist and sexist remarks to the British comedian during filming of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan.

In one scene of the mockumentary, Cohen’s Kazakh journalist character hangs out with the men in a motor home and watches the Pamela Anderson-Tommy Lee sex tape.

The students claim the film-makers got them drunk before getting them to sign release forms agreeing to appear in the film. Their names do not appear in the lawsuit.

The film “made plaintiffs the objects of ridicule, humiliation, mental anguish, and emotional and physical distress”, the lawsuit claimed.

A trial date for the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages, has not been set.

Louis Petrich, a lawyer for 20th Century Fox and One America Productions, said he was pleased about the judge’s decision.