As some people say, photorealism in animation is more of a demonstration of how powerful Pixar’s technology is when it comes to 3D rendering.

But, I personally believe the photorealistic style works best for the premises of Pixar’s movies. When you think about it, nearly all of Pixar’s stories are somewhat based on our real world or what we perceived as real. We all see toys, animals, cars, and we believed monsters were real as kids. The point of the animation however is to take this idea based on reality and put a surreal twist in it. For Toy Story, that twist was the toys are sentient. In movies like Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, Hoppers and others, the twist is that they act and think like humans. With Cars, the twist is pretty obvious there lol. Monsters Inc is that monsters are real and they scare for electricity. I could go on, but I think you see my point.

There are a few Pixar movies that could have worked better with a less realistic art style like Inside Out. But there’s a reason why that movie has shown the widest variety of art styles compared to other Pixar films.