"I moved out here to get away from this kind of thing!" The small town sheriff laments.

"This happens a lot in Chicago?" His deputy asks.

Well, no, not really. The plot is that a group of Martians mistake a Halloween Rebroadcast of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds as an account of a real Martian invasion, and conclude they need to get in on the action! What follows are a bunch of mishaps involving the Martian's haphazard attempts to conquer the town of "Big Bean, IL". Everyone concludes they are kids in really good costumes, except for the Sheriff's daughter and her friend, a kid in a duck suit.

The Martians themselves are comical, and you get the impression they are no threat to anyone but themselves pretty early on. It's a fun family movie.